Child of a Dead God by Barb Hendee, J. C. Hendee Read Free Book Online Page B

Violence is not our way!”

    Chane hardened himself against the young man’s pleas and declaration— as anyone who refused to fight for his own life disgusted him.

    “Gag him as well,” Welstiel ordered. “I do not want him speaking to his lost companions awaiting him.”

    Chane wrapped a blanket strip three times around the young man’s head and pulled it tight. An iron bar scraped free of a door handle. Chane whirled about in panic as he heard Welstiel shout.

    “Get back! Both of you!”

    Welstiel stood before the open door, his face twisted in a grimace as he hissed. Chane stepped along the middle of the passage, peering around Welstiel.

    The door’s inner surface was stained and splintered, as if gouging claws had left dark smeared trails. A pool of viscous black fluid had congealed on the cell’s floor. One monk lay in the mess, or what was left of her.

    Her throat was a shredded mass, and her robe and undergarments had been ripped into tatters, exposing pale skin slashed and torn down to sinew. Worse still, she tried to move. Her head lolled toward the door, and her colorless crystalline eyes opened wide at Welstiel, not in fright or pain but in hunger.

    Her expression filled with bloodlust that echoed in Chane as he stared at her. Her mouth opened, her own black fluids dribbling out its corner.

    Two others crouched beyond her, one upon the spattered bed and the other behind a tiny side table, clinging to one of its stout wooden legs. Both shuddered continuously, muscles spasming, as if they wanted to rise but could not.

    Chane knew that state well. He had felt the same struggle against the commands of his own maker, Toret.

    Their glittering eyes, set deep in pale and spatter-marked faces, were locked on Welstiel. And their black-stained lips quivered with soft animal mewling.

    “Take a long look, Chane,” Welstiel whispered. “Look upon yourself! This is what you are, deep inside—a beast hiding beneath a masquerade of intellect. Remember this . . . with your one foot always poised upon the Feral Path. It is your choice whether or not to succumb and follow them. Now bring me the food.”

    Those words cut through Chane’s rapt fixation on the cell’s inhabitants. He reached down with one hand and jerked up the bound monk.

    The young man made one attempt to struggle, but his whole body locked up at what he saw in the cell.

    Welstiel ripped the monk from Chane’s grip and shoved the man inside. The monk toppled, hitting the floor, and immediately tried to wriggle back toward the door. Welstiel lifted a foot and shoved him back.

    “Feed,” he commanded.

    The two monks still functional leaped upon their living comrade.

    Both made for his throat. The larger male slashed the smaller one’s face, driving him off, then wrapped straining fingers across the living monk’s face and pulled his jaw upward. A high-pitched scream filled the stone cell, muffled by the victim’s gag. The sound broke into chokes as the large male’s teeth sank into the squirming monk’s throat.

    The smaller undead let out a pained yowl and hissed in frustration. Bobbing behind his larger companion, he tried to find an opening to get at the victim’s throat. He finally scurried in to sink his teeth through the robe into the young monk’s thigh. And beyond them, the female’s nails scraped on the stone floor as she tried to pull herself to the feast—and failed.

    The smell of blood grew.

    The two males had barely settled in, their “food” thrashing beneath them, when Welstiel’s shout rang through the cell.

    “Enough . . . back away!”

    Both males flinched as if struck. The smaller squirmed across the floor, clutching at the bed’s dangling covers. Blood was smeared all around his mouth.

    The larger male pulled his mouth from the monk’s throat, swiveling his cowled head and turning maddened eyes upon Welstiel. His jaws widened threateningly, blood spilling out between fangs and elongated